HERCULES. 807 HERCULES STRANGLING. jealous of lole, anointed the robe with the philter she had received from Xessiis. Hercules put. it on, and immediately the poison |)enetrated his bones. Maddened by the terril)le pain, he seized Lichas by the feet and Hung liim into the sea. He tore off the dress, but it stuck to his flesh, which was thus torn from liis bones. In tliis condition Hercules was conveyed by sea to Trachis, and Deianira. being informed of what had occirred, destroyed herself. Hercules liim- self repaired to Mount CEta, where he erected a funeral pile, and, ascending it, commanded that it should be set on fire. The Inirning pile was suddenly surrounded liy a dark cloud, in which, amid thunder and lightning, Hercules was car- ried up to heaven. There he became reconciled to Hera, and married Hebe. Popular legend represented the great, patient, suffering hero as fond of good cheer and relaxa- tion in his hours of rest, and thus in the comedy of .ttica and ilagna Grsecia Hercules was fre- quently introduced as a jovial sensualist, whose intellectual powers are by no means equal to his physical. In Greek art, from the earliest times Hercules is a favorite figure. His labors adorned the metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia and the treasury of the Athenians at Delphi. His statues are numerous. Scopas seems to have represented him in youthful vigor, but in the Hellenistic period the type is that of a bearded man. of athletic build, often with the muscular development carried to excess, as in the Farnese Hercules of Glycon, which perhaps is based on a work of Lysippus. As to the nature and origin of Hercules, there has naturally been the widest diversity of opin- ion. Some, following the later Greek identifica- tions with the Phoenician Melqart. and the re- semblances to the Babylonian hero Gilgamcs, have seen only a Semitic deity adopted by the Greeks. Others again have considered him a solar hero. It seems clear that the story of Her- cules in its earliest features is pure Greek : the Oriental elements are, to judge from our sources, later accretions. Whether the hero or the god is the original form is. however, still matter for debate. E. Meyer {Geschichte des Alterthums. ii.. Halle. 1804) has pointed out that .ttica,Bii?otia.and the Acli;ean colo- nies are the seat of the divine woiship of Her- cules, and insists that he is originally a nature deity, who. like many others, partakes of the changes of nature, now triumphant, now suffering, and that under the Dorian influence, and especially literary tradition, god sank to the hero. On the otiier hand, U. von Wilamowitz-Mollendorff holds that in Hercu- les we have the perfect ideal of the Dorian man. who became a divinity to the tribes with wliom the Dorians were in contact, iluch can be said in favor of both views, and a positive decision between them is not as yet attainable: bvit it must be admitted that the degradation of a god to a hero seems common in the development of Greek mythology, while the reverse is by no means so clearly proved a process. Consult : Wilamowitz - Jliillendorff. Eiiripidcs's llrraklcs (2d ed.. Berlin. 1895) : Furtwiingler and Peters, in Roseher, Lexihon drr r/ricrhincheii tind rii- inischen M yl Itoloyie {Leiyizig, 18S4-97) : and Dun- bach, in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des aiiliquites (Paris, 1892), HERCULES, Pillars of (Gk., al 'UiiaitX^vt arijXai, hni Hfial:lcoiix xli'lai, Lat., Herciilis Cotuiiiiuc) . The name given by the ancients to the two rocks forming the entrance lo the Mediterranean at the Strait of Gibraltar. Caipe ((iibraltjir) in Kurope and .byla (Ceuta) in -Africa. Their erection was giMierally a.seribed by the Greeks to Hercules, on the occasion of his journey to the Kingdom of Gcryon. .ccording to one version of the story, they had once been luiited, but Hercules tore them asunder, to admit the How of the ocean into the Mediterranean: an- otlicr version represents him as causing them to unite temporarily, in order to form, a bridge. The first author who mentions them is Pindar, wlio seems to connect them with Cadiz, and in later times there was much discussion as to their exact location, and especially as to whether they were to be identified with the promontories at the straits, or to be sought in islands, or were pillars ercfted liy Hercules. HERCULES AND STAG. An antique bronze sculpture in the Musco N';i/iouale, Palermo, Sicily, representing the lithe and youthful god grasping a stag by the horn and bearing it doTi to the earth. It was found at Pompeii. HERCULES BEETLE. A scarabid beetle {Dijna-'ites Hercules), remarkable not only for its great size (five inches long), hut for the singular appearance of the male. An enormous HERCCLKS BEETLE, m, male; f, foinale. liom projects from the head, and is opposed by a similar but snuiUcr projection of the thorax, the whole resembling a pair of great but unequal pincers. It is a native of Mrazil. Two species occur in the I'nited States, niiixintefi /i/i/rws is a large greenish-gray species of the Southern States; Diiiuistes Oriiiili. of the far West, has a nmeh larger thoracic horn than the former. Com- pare GoLi.Tii Beetle. HERCULES'S CLUB, Angelica Tree. See Z.VNTllllWI.l II. HERCULES'S CLUB GOURD. See Bottle GorRii. HERCULES STRANGLING THE SER- PENTS. . mythological painting l>y Sir ,(oshua
